lxxii Sir William Jackson Hooker . 
Another nursery was established in 1855 in the private 
grounds near the Palace, for the very different purpose of 
supplying the London and other parks, the property of the 
Crown, with trees and shrubs. Up to the year 1865 more 
than 25,000 trees and shrubs had been supplied from these 
two nurseries, many to Battersea, Hyde, Victoria, and Rich- 
mond Parks ; others to plant open spaces in the private 
grounds of the Queen around the Swiss Cottage for the 
encouragement of wild birds, and to form a belt a quarter 
of a mile long by the banks of the Thames to screen the 
Arboretum from Brentford. Many wagon-loads were sent 
to Aldershot, Deptford, and other yards. 
In 1857 a lake four and a half acres in area was formed in 
a marshy depression that had communicated with the Thames 
opposite Sion House, and which had been enlarged and 
deepened by the removal of many cart-loads of gravel for 
the formation of paths, and for the terrace on which to place 
the Temperate House. The lake was finished in 1861, its 
banks planted, and a communication with the Thames re- 
established by a tunnel and sluices. It has been enlarged 
considerably in later years. 
By far the greatest undertaking carried out in the Arbore- 
tum was the construction of the main body and octagons of 
the Temperate House, or Winter Garden, as it was at first 
proposed to call it. From 1856 onwards my father had 
annually urged on the Government the necessity for such 
a building, and I cannot do better than reproduce the words of 
his Report for 1857, c On the condition of the Royal Gardens,’ 
as showing cause for its construction not being delayed : — ‘All 
the plant-houses are progressing favourably, with one excep- 
tion, to which I have already alluded, as a source of deep 
concern. Unless we have, at once, a structure suited to the 
reception of our large trees and shrubs which will not bear 
frost, especially that once celebrated collection of pines, 
Araucarias, Proteas, &c., they will soon be past recovery* 
Already they have suffered extremely for want of space ; 
many have perished, many are deformed and crippled, being 
